The Grouch In The Cabin In Alaska
by sankontesu
Summary: Inuyasha spent 500 years searching for Kagome again, but somewhere along the way he forgot to keep looking.
1. Thoughts

**THE GROUCH IN THE CABIN IN ALASKA**

 **A/N:** _I might start writing bits and pieces of this. We shall see. I don't personally headcanon Inuyasha to be 200 or whatever years old, I like the idea of him aging somewhat normally, but I decided to play with the idea of him aging like a full-demon and this happened. **Less than 800 words.**_

* * *

It was obvious I'd end up alone in Alaska someday.

Even back when the rumor of Alaska had just begun to spread across the Russian border and spilled into the minds of the Europeans, I had a feeling that it was calling to me. And not for gold, not for land.

I just wanted peace.

I kept notes to myself, not a diary, don't confuse me for a _sissy_ , just a patchwork made up of a few dog-eared pages, reminding me to go back to Japan in 1981. _She'd be born in 1981_. And I'd see her again.

I never did make it back there though.

 _500_ years of me traveling every corner of this small insignificant rock in our vast solar system, and I _still_ didn't move from my root in Mountain Village, Alaska, to silence the voice in my head that implored for me to find her again.

I tucked those notes into a cabinet that have long since been covered in dust by now, and for a few years I did everything I could to forget I ever planned to see her again in the first place.

After my first human war, I realized that the stupidity of humanity truly knew no bounds.

We were marching together as a group of _maybe_ 25, 000, led by that short little man named Nobunaga, but the enemy was fooled into thinking we were double that size, and even though we emerged victorious, the bitter sting of a flesh wound jabbed at my side at the bottom of a ditch, alone again. And that's when I swore off warfare combat forever.

And it'd be almost another 354 years before I broke that promise.

After Miroko and Sango's grandchildren passed, I tended to their graves, gave them my best, and I traveled.

Some days, I kept going even when I couldn't distinguish my fingers from my toes, and the wind was so dusty that I used my hearing to guide me through the storms. I snuck past a group of settlers one night, the rats following me as companions, and I set sail towards strange and distant lands. I traveled for a long time, and some nights I didn't even sleep, although sometimes I think I would have preferred to.

If only to see her face again.

Of all the things in life that had faded from my memory, _her face was the one thing that stayed consistently clear._ Like the beating of my own ridiculous heart.

* * *

 _"_ _We finally got someone who wants to start some research here!"_ Jim broke through the winter snow and plotted himself down on the creaky bar-stool while motioning for a drink. He made an exaggerated " _whew"_ sound by blowing his cheeks, while forming an _"o"_ with his mouth, and then preceded to annoyingly pat his legs to rid the cold. "Isn't that interesting?"

A hunched over figure nursed his beer in silence and shrugged, indifferent.

Jim shifted eyes from the curvy bar-tender back to the tightly bundled up man sitting two chairs across from him. The woman behind the bar looked back at him and gave him a sympathetic look. Jim put one bent elbow on the table in front of him and cupped his chin, tapping his cheek with his index finger in thought. _How to go about this one…_

"So," He started again, swiveling around on the stool and crossing his feet on the chair in-between them, "I offered the recruiter some dorms down closer to the city, but he said that the graduate is more of a country mouse and doesn't like the noise so much."

A pair of cold, guarded, golden eyes, pierced his blue ones and he gulped, already regretting his choice in direction.

" _And?_ " A voice rasped out, scratchy and muffled by the scarf around his face.

"And…well….you…have an extra room, don't you?"

* * *

 **A/N:** _Rereading, I realize this might sound a little bit like Sesshomaru, but I assure you IT IS INUYASHA. HE IS JUST JADED AND LONELY._


	2. Traveling to the New World

_**P: 2**_

 **A/N:** I'm still setting things up, and I did say I'd only be updating this in small segments!

* * *

Kagome was born (by nature) to be a social person.

The reality was, she had never once in her life put effort into making friends; friends just appeared. Like rain, or money underneath her pillow in exchange for teeth. But after the well had decided to stop giving her passage rights, something strange had happened.

She stopped _wanting_ to be around people. And it took a little while for said people to notice, but they noticed.

Because people, as it so was, did not know of the Feudal Era, or priestesses, or monks, or demon slayers, or fox fire, or dog ears and fangs. They only knew of Facebook, the newest Anime, and whatever was on the front page of Buzzfeed dot com. And Kagome had no interest in those things, or in people that catered to these insignificant joys. So without really realizing it, she began to distance herself. Kagome marooned herself on an island all her own, watching sail boats filled with people pass by and not even bothering to wave. She ignored phone calls, buried her head into long nights at the library, and when her mother asked her if everything was okay, Kagome learned to smile until it became convincing enough that she stopped asking.

And the funniest thing of all; Kagome was becoming more and more like the half-demon that she had left behind.

Grumpy. Lonely. Disassociating the world.

 _Except that's not even true, because the last time she saw him, he was surrounded by friends._ Their friends. And he was happy and involved, and _social_.

 _(Sort of how she wasn't anymore.)_

Kagome groans into her pillow and turns onto her back, choosing to stare listlessly at the ceiling above her. It was six pm on a Saturday, she was at her single room apartment thinking about the things she couldn't change, and _not_ out clubbing with her high school friends.

Which was typical, but also not something she liked to remind herself about.

Ironically enough, the only one that didn't give her any grief about it, was Hojo. Who in Kagome's silent opinion, turned out to be more than just an alright guy. He got taller, broader, still lean but not in an unattractive way. His hair was mostly the same, except for that terrible buzz-cut he did in his second year of University, and his voice remained unchanged. Always that calming timber tone, as if his only goal and purpose in life was to sooth the soul of others.

Unfortunately it never really soothed hers, but the intention was always there, and she accepted it gratuitously just the same.

 _"You got a good head on your shoulders Higurashi_ ," he'd say, with a small grin. _"It's only fitting you wouldn't be out partying every night with the rest of us."_

In some way, she knew that was a compliment. But the sting was too fresh and direct for her to take it as such, and had moodily narrowed her eyes and dug her nose into another textbook. Thankfully he was on his way out, and she chose to nod in his direction when he said goodbye, rather than reiterating it back to him.

The clueless med student would assume later with a confident notion that it had something to do with her being sick. Because Higurashi only ever didn't say goodbye when she feeling ill, and surely can't at _all_ be because she was upset with him.

Kagome fully expects some ridiculous antidote waiting outside her door in the morning.

"A good head on your shoulders," she echoed, craning her wrist to her face so she could get a better look at the time. 6:04. Great. Fantastic.

Flipping her pillow onto her face, she held it tight against her and screamed, listening to the muffled sound and feeling like a balloon deflating from stress.

All her friends were being picked off, filing away into their careers or doctorate degrees, and here she was. On the cusp of graduating with her masters in Biological Sciences and nowhere near a stable job that aligned with her focus; not even an internship.

Even her little brother was already interned at a fancy law establishment. One with large mahogany doors, and marble floors, and judgmental secretaries that knew they had went to school to become something more but settled for the comfort of a paycheck.

And here his older sister was; screaming hopelessly into a pillow.

Reasonably she knew it wasn't entirely the _same_ thing. She had chosen this subject. She had chosen to slay days that turned into nights that stretched into mornings, immersing herself into Darwin and Newton, and Aristotle.

Although, it wasn't her first choice.

 _History_ was her first choice.

Until three core classes in and she learned that it was all _wrong_. There was no mention of a dog boy that saved Japan along with his three- _four_ companions, or a jewel, or even that priestesses weren't props for religion- _they defended and protected and healed the sick_.

So then with all the melancholy in her heart, she had stumbled out of a failed test (where she scribbled a presumed fairy tale onto her final paper), and declared Biology as her new major.

When she still couldn't decide what to do with the coveted degree after four years, she enrolled into the Masters program.

And now she was at the end of _that_ , and she was about to run smack into a wall she liked to call, 'reality.'

"Reality can bite me," she mumbles at the same time that her cellphone buzzes to life. She eyes it with morbid curiosity. It was probably Hojo. Calling to let her know he was in a Walgreens and wanted to make sure she wasn't down with a cold. Or Yuki, drunk or high or both, and chiding her in an unusually high voice. _"You should be out here, you boring old maid."_

But when she finally lifts it up to her face, casting a blueish glow over her features, it's a number she doesn't recognize. An area code from a city she isn't familiar with.

Her eyebrow arches and she slides the little green button at the bottom to the right.

"Hello?"

"Is Kagome Higurashi available?"

The voice was male, with a heavy American accent, and Kagome folds forward, nervously digging her hands into the yellow sheets of her mattress.

"Speaking?"

"Ah, Ms. Higurashi. It's Jim, from the Wild Mammals Initiative, how are you doing today? Or tonight. Is it tonight?"

"T-tonight," she says with a note of uncertainty.

"Ah. Hope I'm not waking you up-"

"Not at all," Kagome interrupted.

"Well I'm sure you know why I'm calling."

"Um…" She flailed around, fumbling around her nightstand for her notepad. There must be a jotted down reminder for this all somewhere. "Wild Mammals Incentive?"

"Initiative. You applied for our Summer Research program a while back."

Kagome's eyes immediately brightened, suddenly realizing why someone named Jim would be calling about a Summer Research program. Last semester during the internship fair, nothing had peeked her interest and she was on her way out of the auditorium, except for one booth in particular-

"The one in Alaska?"

"The one and only," Jim replied, a hearty tone to his voice. "You got the spot, and we were wondering if you'd like to accept."

Her heart was leaping like a snap drum from her chest, "Yes! Yes I would."

* * *

The cold was biting, like the air itself was thirsty for all the heat in her body and snatching it straight from her bones. It was quite possibly the coldest Kagome Higurashi has ever been, and an equally as chilling thought slips into her mind asking: _what you gotten yourself into, Higurashi?_

But the airport is empty, as are the roads, and when her cab driver finally leaves her at the shabby little half-way point between where she was and where she was going, there is nothing for miles except wilderness and sunshine and life untouched by the hands of man.

And she feels like she belongs.

"Higurashi?"

She turns swiftly, her eyes as big as her head when she takes in the size of the lumberjack man in front of her. She knows right then and there that this must be Jim. The first and probably only Jim she will ever meet, since she comes from a world where American names are not the common occurrence. But his name seems to be the only American thing about him. He's the size of a building, his arms as thick as the branches of her Goshinbuko tree, with the almond slit eyes of his ancestors, and the brown brilliant skin of a people that spent many centuries under the rays of the sun. Striking crystal eyes.

Her mouth is dry in awe, and she finds it easier to nod than it is to speak up for herself. But she does so with a smile, and he relaxes.

"Welcome to Alaska!"

* * *

They board a tiny thing with wings that Kagome thinks decidedly should not be considered a plane at all, and yet here she is; flying. Thousand feet off the ground.

She has earphones snug over her head, and she feels every nerve of her body twitching and sparking, warning her, saying, _mayday mayday you're in trouble, abort abort abort._

But she says nothing, her mouth clamped into a tight little line, pressing hard enough against each other that she's sure they're white and devoid of any prior pink hues.

Jim says a lot, chattering at a speed that she can hardly keep up with, although when he uses his hands to gesture to things in the distance, things they're passing over, or things he just wants to elaborate on, she finds it easy to pay close attention. Mostly out of fear.

"S-should you keep your hands off the controls?" She says carefully, not trying to insult him.

He watches her lips open and close but shakes his head and taps his head set; hands off the plane again. "Use your mic!"

Kagome nods stupidly and grapples for the cord of her headset, running the front of her thumb smoothly up the wire in search for the needed switch.

But by the time she finds it, they're swooping over a herd of buffalo and she loses the ability to speak because the sight steals the capability from her.

It's like a gliding stream of brown and cobalt fur as they rush over them. The sun glistens like it does to the stones in rivers, bouncing from their bodies and reflecting up to the sky. Kagome leans forward in fascination, watching as the herd separates like the Red Sea into two perfectly portioned sections, running and trembling the earth as the vessels passes loudly above them.

"Beaut, ain't it?"

It's Jim's voice and Kagome knows he's probably using his hands again to talk to her, but she doesn't care, because now there are rows and rows of pretty purple mountain peaks, and they're so much more stunning from the front seat of somewhere in the clouds than it is through the pictures in a magazine. It's an alien planet, and she feels like the only woman in the world.

Even the sky isn't the same blue as the one in Japan. This one is pink and lavender and _gold_. The mountains are the noses of sleeping Gods compared the ones from home, and the hills roll like endless foaming waves.

She swallows and touches the pane of her window, the way she used to do when she was a little girl sitting in a 3D movie theater, reaching out to touch the images that popped from the screen.

Reaching for the faded out red button of the mic, she presses it and turns to Jim with a grin so wide that he can see all her teeth.

"It's gorgeous!"

* * *

When they land, Kagome finds that she has no cell service; but that was to be expected. She'll have to find a way to hook up her laptop and send her mother an email later.

Jim is using some form cinderblock that he passes off a walkie-talkie, talking in an exasperated tone that is making Kagome slightly nervous.

When he finally cuts the communication, he turns to her with a distant annoyed expression and she asks him if everything was okay.

"Yeah," he sighs and scratches the back of his head, which leads her to believe the opposite. "The landowner of the cabin you'll be staying in isn't home yet."

"Ah." Kagome swings her lucky yellow bag down to the ground and scans the environment around them. Secluded. Isolated. And she had completely forgotten she'd be sharing a home with another body. A stranger.

"What's his name again?"

The comforting smile returns to Jim's face and Kagome decides that whoever this stranger is, he can't be all that bad.

"He goes by Iza. And don't let him run you off, he can be a little rough around the edges."

Kagome rolls her eyes and crosses her arms with a tilt to her stance, "Trust me, it's nothing I haven't handled before."

Jim's eyebrow arches in curiosity, allowing her room to explain.

The features on her face instantly transform from self-confident to sorrow as she says with a tiny smile, "Just some guy I used to know."

* * *

 **A/N:** Iza is exactly who you think it is. Dude decided to adopt his mother's name. Well. Some of it. The meeting finally happens in the next chapter!


End file.
